Gobe Productive To Be GPLed

ParisTG writes "The Gobe Productive office suite is to be re-licensed under the GPL, according to an interview by OSNews. "FreeRadical has purchased the gobeProductive source code and plans to continue to develop the product under a GPL license."" The people who wrote Gobe, are also the folks who wrote ClarisWorks ^? , if you remember back to that. I've used Gobe a few times before - great office suite.

Comments

It's fast software

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, if OpenOffice is too slow on your machine try Gobe Productive. It has versions on BeOS, Windows, and Linux. The speed is amazing.

I'm rolling out 30 P166s and this will be on it :)

Office Shakedown

[peatbakke]

Hey, this is great stuff. A couple years ago, people were saying that Linux didn't stand a chance in business computing unless a good office productivity suite was available ... and now we have several in the pipeline, a couple of which are actually quite reasonable. Give 'em another year or two, and I think we'll have some solid cross platform products.

So, I'm curious: Releasing GP under an open source license is certainly The Right Thing To Do, but what specific benefits might we get from it? Are office suites as layered as operating systems, with code on higher levels fairly portable, or are the only standards at the file format level?

Also, is it a "from scratch" rewrite of ClarisWorks, or might there be some sticky licensing issues with Apple popping up in the near future .. ?

Regardless, having different ways of doing the same things, so long as there's open and stable file formats, is always a good thing ...

Re:Office Shakedown

[praedor]

THE problem with Gobe (and ALL linux office suites, err, the word processor part) is that NONE have the ability to handle citations and references. ONLY Lyx can do this and Lyx is simply not a generally user-friendly app vs standard wordprocessors that virtually everyone on the planet it comfortable and used to. Thus, we will get a pretty suite in Gobe but it will not distinguish itself from StarOffice/OpenOffice, KOffice, or whatever the suite name is for the Gnome equivalent is. None of these suites can do citations and references and thus, if you do ANY sort of research paper writing, scientific writing, ANY writing that requires applying proper attribution, then the only game in town, unfortunately, is Lyx (or straight LaTex for you real nutbars out there).

On the other hand, Office and Wordperfect (I don't know about AppleWorks) CAN deal with citations and references via third party addons like EndNote. Thus, virtually everyon in my biochem department uses either word or wordperfect on macs or PCs to write their scientific papers because they can handle citations. None would even consider any other suite because of their glaring lack in this regard.

First question out of a graduate student co-worker's mouth to me when I was talking to her about my use of linux was "Can it run EndNote?" No EndNote, no linux. Now linux doesn't need EndNote, mind you, just the same functionality of EndNote either organic to a wordprocessor OR the ability for each wordprocessor to accept simple addons with the capability of EndNote (Pybliographic or Sixpack in combination with Lyx, for instance, via the bibtex intermediary).

Until a linux office product can handle citations and references in its wordprocessor, they are mere toys for fluff writing (letters to mom, resumes, recipes, etc), not useful for professional technical/scientific writing.

Re:Wasted effort potentially damaging to all

[jvmatthe]

Wasted effort? You're very enthusiastic about determining what other people should be doing with their time -- how would you feel if someone told you what to do with yours, and you didn't have a choice?

This effort is not wasted if the people expending the effort don't feel that it is. 'Wasted' is a value judgement that you're making, not an objective statement of fact.

Perhaps you'd have been happier if I used the word "redundant"? It is redundant effort and my post is a comment on the possible results of the release of Yet Another Free Office Suite. However, I never "told" anyone what to do. Reread my post: I say here is a possible outcome of this kind of community dilution. If people have suddenly decided to take my opinions on what the future holds as orders for how to run their lives, then it sure doesn't manifest itself very often. I could see that on the highway to work this morning...they all blithely ignored my suggestions for better driving.

And, quite frankly, I do think we should criticize the things we get for "free". I complain about how my taxes are spent on "free" services for myself and other citizens every day. And my vote is my key to push those free things towards the places I think they're necessary. Coming here to /. and expressing my opinion and then voting with my download and bug reports and (if it comes to it) my code patches is how I'll vote for my favorite free office software.

So yes I've got balls to complain about free stuff. Do you? Or are you simply another one of those sheeple that feels that free software is also "free" of fault simply because it's got a free license?

If we, the free software community, aren't critical of ourselves and take appropriate actions then surely others will be, and they will be a lot less constructive about it.

Re:GOBE is a StarOffice world

[ReconRich]

In a way, it's a little sad that open source fans can't all get behind one specific office suite.
This attitude, that "There can be only one" is a sure fire recipe for making Open Source software suck as badly as closed source software. The competition between KDE and Gnome has been nothing but good for both sides. M$ succeeded in the first place by the desire that many people had 10 years ago for 1 OS, 1 Word Processor and so on. Well, we have it now, and only people with an MCSE like it.
The desire for a single Office Suite, Desktop System, etc. comes from the desire to "Beat Microsoft". We have one strength over M$ - They are a marketing machine, not a technology machine. If we try to beat them at their own game, we will lose. If we play our own game - Free software competing with ITSELF, then we will win. And we won't get stuck with software that was developed for its marketing value. The idea that we ought to all work together is rubbish; for all its ugliness the KDE vs. Gnome war made both sides better. And they will continue to get better because of the competition. The same chance exists with Office Suites. Don't tell me we ought to "work together" ; tell me why "yours" is great, and mine "sucks". "Mine" will be better for it. And so will "yours"

-- Recon

Re:I've used it, and it is really great.

[praedor]

My question for pdf format saving...can you edit it after it is in pdf format? No other linux office app that can save to (well, actually print to) pdf format can then open and edit same pdf. It is one way.

I like pdf generally but for the inability to edit it (unless one has windoze or a mac and shells out for the Adobe pdf suite.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:The number of free office suites is exploding

[homer_ca]

"there's no compelling reason for anyone who's happy using Office to switch to a "wannabe" package"

Microsoft faces the same problem with their Office. If someone is happy using Office 2000 (or even Office 97) what reason would they have to pay to upgrade to Office XP? They really just have two choices to maintain their revenue stream: force upgrades by breaking compatibility or push for subscription licensing.

The best hope for a sale (either MS Office or an alternative) is an OEM preinstall. Antitrust settlement or not, MS still has the big OEMS by the balls, so the mom and pop white box vendors are the best hope for a preinstall of free software like Openoffice.org or Gobe.